Mannequins have been useful for displays in many fields including retail, education, museums and exhibits. Mannequins have been constructed of wood, plaster, wax and other materials. The ability to position a mannequin into a variety of life-like poses is important, particularly in the use of life-size mannequins in high quality displays, such as museum exhibitions.
Existing mannequins cannot be repositioned easily because the joints used to connect parts of a mannequin together are often fixed and not easily adjustable. Thus, it is often necessary to remove or replace a mannequin's limb in order to alter its positioning. In fact, because existing mannequin joints do not mimic human joints, certain mannequin positions cannot be achieved even by removing or replacing limbs. Therefore, it is often necessary to custom design or custom order mannequins that are already in the desired positions, which involves added cost.
Existing movable joints are problematic since their range of movement is fairly limited, and is usually restricted to rotation within a single plane. Existing flexible mannequins are often constructed out of a flexible steel (or wire) core and an exterior made of foam or other flexible material. Because such a composition does not replicate the anatomy and positioning of real joints, natural human-like poses are hard to achieve.
Furthermore, existing mannequins are unable to support any significant weight, which prevents the use of props in high quality displays.